15.
"The Skydiving Granny": Lavern Everett was turning 80 years old and felt like doing
something really crazy for her birthday.
While most women around her age might celebrate by knitting their grandchildren some socks
or by sucking down an extra piece of Werther's butterscotch candy, Lavern thought this to
be the perfect excuse to go skydiving instead.
After all, this was something she had been meaning to kick off of her bucket list for
some time now.
When she actually tries to skydive, however, she almost ends up kicking over the entire
bucket instead.
The senior dives out of the plane with her instructor close behind, and everything seems
to be going smoothly.
That is, until they suddenly lock into a heavy spiral.
Poor Lavern's bottom half has fallen out of her harness and she is now holding onto
her instructor for dear life.
If he dares to let her go, well, let's just say that her tombstone will have matching
dates.
Her shirt flies over her head, but not being able to see is probably more of a blessing
than not in this instance.
Meanwhile, everyone else gets a full view.
If you're wondering what an 80-year-old looks like skydiving without a shirt on, it's
not pretty.
Anyway, after a long and terrifying freefall, Lavern and the instructor hit the ground hard,
but both are okay.
As it turns out, Lavern almost fell out of her harness because her instructor had loosened
it up for her so that it wouldn't feel too tight.
If you look closely, you can even see how the harness strap loosely hangs over her shoulder
just minutes before jump.
Still, this near-death experience wasn't enough to stop the thrill-seeking granny for
long.
She later said in an interview with ABC News that she is going to drive a race car at top
speeds for her next birthday.
Of course, all of us at Top15s hope that she brings a camera with her.
If you've been enjoying the countdown so far, I'd really appreciate it if you to
were leave us a like, it really helps us out.
14.
"Death and Orange Shorts": Two friends are standing on top of two buildings, and
one is trying to convince the other to jump across a 5 foot gap between them.
His friend is hesitates though – and with good reason: below them is a huge drop into
an alleyway that's littered with old toilets, doors, and other bits of sharp and broken
debris ["de-bree"] that could easily kill anyone unlucky enough to fall.
The first kid tries to reassure his friend that he will simply catch him if anything
goes wrong.
"I'll put my beer down," he says matter-of-factly.
"Can you just move out of the way," the second kid responds.
At first it looks like he might not jump after all, but then he suddenly pushes himself off
the ledge and leaps forward.
I'm not saying that I could do better, but the attempt is not very graceful.
He barely gets a toehold on the other building's ledge and then his foot completely slips off.
His arms swing wildly in the air and he clumsily ["clum-silly"] falls forward.
It looks like he is going to be a goner for sure.
Those broken toilets are just calling his name down below.
But then, at the last second, he catches the ledge with his shin and tumbles onto the other
side.
He gives a little smirk and straightens out his glasses.
Watching the tape again, you've got to love how the first guy hardly does anything to
help save his falling friend.
At least he did manage to put the beer down.
13.
"Ride the Lightning": Nick Griemsmann ["Grims-man"] is busy having way more
fun than a grown adult should on Periscope one day in Phoenix ["Fee-nicks"], Arizona
["Air-riz-zone-nah"] when he suddenly and randomly almost dies.
The deeply religious man is talking to random strangers about the strength of Jesus when
he suddenly becomes the target of a possible divine intervention himself.
A gigantic streak of lightning erupts just inches away from where he is standing.
When you play the footage in slow motion, you can see the white-hot flash of light quickly
pan from left to right.
Nick drops the phone and yells in surprise.
Strangely enough, he seems overjoyed by the entire experience and not at all afraid.
Instead of running for cover, he smiles brightly and announces to his Periscope fans that he
was almost struck by lightning (as if they couldn't already tell).
Nick later recounts how the lightning felt as hot as an oven, but without any burning
pain.
The hand that he was holding his phone with was all numb and tingly ["ting-glee"]
for some time afterward, meaning he most likely absorbed some of the electricity himself.
12.
"Smackie ["Smack-kee"] Chan": Not many people know about this one, but Jackie
Chan almost ended his career in the 1980s after he smacked his head so hard that he
nearly died.
This wasn't even the most difficult stunt of his career by any means, but it was definitely
the one that hurt him the most.
The stunt went so badly, in fact, that poor Jackie remains permanently damaged to this
day.
His near-death experience occurred on the set of a movie called Armour of God in 1987.
The expert martial artist was fearlessly doing all of his own stunts as usual, and everything
was going well until he came across a scene where he had to jump off a wall into a tree.
Nothing too hard, right?
Especially for Jackie Chan.
Wrong.
Well, kind of wrong.
The first take went smoothly, but the director told Jackie to do it a second time so that
they would have plenty of footage for editing.
Jackie Chan did as he was told, but this time the weakened tree branch snapped under his
weight and sent him tumbling headfirst into a group of jagged rocks 15 feet below.
The crew could tell he was seriously hurt as soon as he hit the ground.
They rush over to Jackie and find blood literally squirting out of his ear in thick red pumps.
Jackie himself was passing in and out of consciousness and was otherwise hardly responsive.
The film crew rushed him to the hospital without a moment to spare.
As with any serious head injury, things weren't looking very good.
A brain surgeon first had to remove a huge piece of Jackie's skull that had been bashed
in, and then he had to fill the remaining hole with a special plastic plug.
After that, there was nothing left for the hospital staff to do except wait and see how
well the movie star would recover.
At the time, they weren't sure if he would even be able to speak on his own again – let
alone try to do any more stunts – but, as we all know, Jackie is one tough son of a
dragon, and he was back throwing high kicks again in no time.
Still, the giant piece of plastic remains in Jackie's head to this day.
He has been known to even let you feel the huge scar if you ask him to nicely enough.
He still looks alright on the outside, but this stunt costed him 80 percent of his hearing
in his right ear forever.
Perhaps this is why he never listens to Chris Tucker in Rush Hour.
11.
"Christine Gets Wrecked": Twenty-eight-year-old Christine Taylor is just beginning to learn
how to drive stick shift when she stalls out in the worst place possible: in the middle
of a railroad crossing.
And now, as if right on time, a train is barreling towards her with absolutely no way of stopping.
Christine must have really liked her new car because she continues to try and drive over
the tracks until the very last second.
By the time she tumbles out of her car door, the train is already on top of her.
There's not even enough time for her to run.
Luckily for her, the train had already started to slow down in anticipation of a nearby station.
Had the train been going at full speed, then she would have been nothing more than a smear
on the road.
Glass shards fly in front of the train on impact, but Christine is somehow miraculously
okay.
Her new car, meanwhile, is absolutely totaled.
10.
"The Failsaw": When a strong storm toppled ["top-pulled"] trees and houses in Carmi
["Car-me"], Illinois ["ill-ah-noy"], WTVW news was quick to the scene.
It seemed like a simple story; no one on the news team could have suspected that they would
accidentally capture a near-death experience on tape that day – let alone one involving
a chainsaw.
As news reporter Drew Gardner ["Guard-ner"] is talking about the massive damage that the
storm has caused, a team of landscapers are busily sawing through the remains of a tree
behind him.
Suddenly the tree's roots drop back to the ground – along with one of the landscapers,
who is still holding on tight to his buzzing chainsaw.
The tree's sudden drop sends the landscaper flying forward.
He barely manages to catch himself with his left hand just in time to avoid falling face-first
onto the chainsaw's spinning blades.
This chilling footage shows just how easily your next work shift can turn out to be your
last.
9.
"Shirts Versus Skinned": It's just another day on the basketball court for a group of
teenage boys.
One of them feels like showing off their skills and goes in for a slam dunk.
He makes the basket and is now quite popular with his friends, but only because he almost
died while doing so.
The dunk goes fine, but his decision to hang onto the rim is where everything falls apart
– literally.
As he is hanging onto the net, the entire thing just falls over – hoop, pole and all.
He hits the ground face up just in time to see the backboard coming directly down towards
him.
The corner of the backboard almost chops his head clean off, or at least nearly smashes
in his windpipe for sure.
Fortunately for him, it just misses his head by an inch.
Now he probably will stick with simple layup.
8.
"All Duct ["Ducked"] Up": Skylar ["Sky-ler"] Fish and his buddies were bored after school
one day in January when they decided to play the "Duct Tape Challenge".
For those who don't know, this is an internet challenge where your friends duct tape you
until you can't move, and then laugh as you struggle to break free.
The challenge is going pretty much just like that at first.
Skylar hops around helplessly while both his friends joke and laugh.
When he falls over though, the harmless horseplay suddenly turns into a full-blown disaster.
That's because Skylar doesn't just fall straight to the ground.
Instead, he bashes his eye against a window frame with such force that it crushes his
face.
You can see his friend's expression go from laughter and amusement to wide-eyed horror
as soon as it happens.
So much blood is pouring out of Skylar's eye that it sends him into a seizure and makes
him choke.
At the hospital surgeons drain excess blood out of his brain and close his head injury
with 48 staples.
Nobody was sure if the 14-year-old boy was going to pull through or if the duct tape
challenge had claimed its first victim instead.
Although he did survive, he hit the window sill at such an angle that it literally pinched
shut all of the nerves in his left eye, and now he has absolutely vision in that eye as
a result.
Worst of all, it could very well stay that way forever.
His face is also somewhat disfigured ["diss-figured"].
Now Skylar and the rest of the Fish family want to speak out against the dangers of the
duct tape challenge.
His family has also started a GoFundMe page to cover his medical costs with a goal of
5 thousand dollars.
Here's the website address if you want to help
7.
"The Haunted Hunter": Jovaughn ["Jo-vahn"] Walker was at a Shell Gas Station in Broward
["Brow-werd"] County, Florida when the spirits in his head told him to kill.
The 22-year-old psycho grabbed an elderly customer named Douglas Brochet ["Bro-chit"]
– who was in his 80s – and started beating him over and over again with a piece of metal
that he had broken off of a shelf.
Douglas' wife tried to get in between the two, but Jovaughn continued to strike the
old man as the voices in his head screamed louder and louder.
He eventually left his victim stunned, scared and bleeding.
Next, Jovaughn hopped inside of a Ford Ranger that he had stolen earlier in the day and
drove to a local pawn store.
It was barely 10 in the morning and he had already almost killed one man on tape.
When he gets inside of the pawn shop, he would do the same thing all over again to another
person.
This time the voices in Jovaughn's head tell him to grab a nearby Samurai ["Sam-mer-rye"]
sword and start swinging.
His target is a 49-year-old cashier named Parjit Singh ["Par-jhit" "Sing"].
Jovaughn swings the sword over and over until Parjit runs into the cell phone store next
door for cover – and that's when the attack is caught on tape.
Jovaughn corners the poor victim and slashes him three times in the arms until he falls
over, at which point the psycho delivers vicious overhead swings straight into the man's
legs, arms and torso.
The employee tries to defend himself from the blows as best he can, but Jovaughn's
psychotic rage is too much.
Six more strikes land before the store clerk gets a burst of adrenaline and jumps to his
feet.
He throws a large box of cell phone chargers at Jovaughn and sends him fleeing – then
he clutches his damaged hand in severe pain.
A random customer chases Jovaughn down and tackles him before he can harm anyone else.
It takes more than three shopkeepers to pin the madman down, and that's despite his
light frame.
When the police interview him, Jovaughn says that he had seen a poltergeist ["paul-ter-gheist"]
the day before, and that it was this spirit who gave him his special orders to kill.
His first victim, Douglas Brochet, needed 18 stitches to close multiple head wounds.
Parjit Singh, meanwhile, required a 2-day stay in the hospital to repair nerves that
had been severed in his finger.
Jovaughn has since been charged with aggravated assault and attempted murder.
He is currently awaiting trial.
6.
"Israel Gets Real": Shlomo Wollins ["Slow-mo" "Wahl-lins"] is an Israeli ["Is-rail-lee"]
news reporter who is upset because his neighborhood is constantly being bombed by handheld mortars
from Palestine ["Pal-lis-stine"].
He lives in the town of Sderot ["Es-de-rot"].
It's one of the many territories surrounding the Gaza ["Gah-za"] Strip.
As such, there had already been thousands of mortar attacks all around him for years,
but on this day, one of the shells struck way too close to home.
Shlomo timidly ["tim-mid-lee"] walks into his backyard to talk about a recent mortar
attack that had just blown up a nearby state road.
He doesn't get out more than a couple sentences before a mortar strikes his neighbor's roof
right in front of him.
Schlomo hits the ground as shrapnel flies all around.
He is uninjured, but the strike seriously wounds his unlucky next-door neighbor who
was taking a shower upstairs.
The mortar strike was only one house from his own.
A sudden gust of wind could have easily sent it to his address instead.
He is worried about surviving, but apparently near-death experiences are simply a way of
life when you are living along the Gaza Strip.
5.
"The Oakland Raiders": Two youths sprint across a BP gas station dressed in dark clothes
with black masks, obviously up to no good.
One charges straight inside the Oakland Park convenience store while the other tentatively
["tent-tat-tive-lee"] stays back.
The first wastes no time shooting directly into the glass at point blank range.
The cashier ducks for his life as gunshots fill the air.
For fifteen seconds the robber fires round after round into the glass.
The glass is bulletproof, but the ruthless would-be killer methodically searches for
weak points by shooting the glass in different places.
Finally they both give up and run away emptyhanded.
What is terrifying about this robbery is how they don't even give the cashier a single
chance to comply ["come-ply"] with their demands for cash before they start shooting.
It's obvious that they preferred no witnesses.
The two are still at large and now have a bounty of 3 thousand dollars on their heads
issued by the Sheriff's Office in Broward ["Brow-werd"] County, Florida.
4.
"Near-Death in Italy": How do you fall one thousand feet and survive with only minor
injuries?
You'd have to ask Matthew Gough ["Go"], though chances are he couldn't exactly tell
you either.
The 25-year-old was traveling all around the world when he decided to try the extreme sport
of base-jumping in Lake Garda ["Guard-ah"], Italy.
It didn't turn out so well – then again, it also didn't turn out so bad, depending
on how you look at it.
For those who don't know, base-jumping is where you drop off a cliff with a parachute,
helmet and little else.
Matthew checks his gear and launches off the side.
He is going 40 miles-per-hour when his parachute fails to properly deploy.
The chute gets so twisted that it ends up facing backwards, which sends him flying face-first
into the rocky cliff.
His body hits the wall again and again all the way day.
As the ground rushes up to meet him, all Matthew can do is pray not to land in a nearby lake.
He was sure that his legs were broken and that he would have drowned.
That's when he looked down to see the spikes.
Yes, actual spikes.
Ten metal poles used to hang up wetsuits to be exact.
Now, here's where things become even more unbelievable: right before Matthew hits the
ground, one of spikes perfectly hooks his helmet and rips it clean off.
This last-second change is probably what slowed his speed down and softened the blow.
When his friends find him, Matthew only had minor injuries to his knees, the heel of one
foot and his tailbone.
Oh, and he had some pretty incredible footage of his near-death experience, too.
3.
"Nice Snowing You": Markus Engberg ["Marcus" "En-berg"] and his close friend are having
a great time in the snowbanks of North Sweden.
The avid ["ah-vid"] snowmobile riders are performing tricks on the mountaintop when
something goes horribly wrong.
Markus is filming his friend during a big jump from a slope.
His friend (who has decided to remain nameless) lands the jump and falls over, which would
have been fine had the snowmobile not landed directly on top of him.
Not only that – now it rips into his back at full speed.
Markus' friend is helplessly trapped facedown under the snowmobile's thick treads, which
are now grinding the skin of his back into red chunks.
The highspeed noise sounds exactly like a chainsaw.
Only when Markus kills the engine can he finally hear his friend's agonizing ["ahg-gone-nigh-zing"]
screams.
He bravely pulls his friend out from the wreckage.
His friend has a broken forearm and the back of his shirt is completely ripped open.
The flesh is stripped down to the muscle; it's a third-degree burn.
Thinking fast, Markus wraps his scarf around his friend's heavily-bleeding arm and drives
him down the mountain to safety.
He survives . . . and so does the harrowing ["hair-row-ing"] tape.
2.
"Sky-Dying": This video comes from Christopher Jones, a typical 22-year-old thrill-seeker
who is not afraid to risk his life to have a good time.
Today he is going for a nice little 12,000-foot skydive to get a much-needed adrenaline fix.
He only makes it a quarter of the way down before disaster strikes.
The video is shot from the helmet cam of his instructor, Sheldon McFarlane ["Shell-den"
"Mick-Far-lan"], who looks over to see Chris completely blacked out and thrashing
wildly.
That's when the terrifying realization sets in: his student is having a seizure at 9 thousand
feet in the air, and he is the only person who can save him.
It's a race against time as Sheldon reaches out to pull Chris's parachute cord, but
the student is just shaking too hard to get hold of.
Sheldon just barely misses the cord, and then Chris suddenly plunges further down.
He twists and turns over and over towards his doom.
The instructor refuses to give up, however, and makes one last-ditch effort to save Chris's
life.
It feels like you are watching a Superman movie as he zooms towards the helpless skydiver
in a straight line and grabs ahold of him with all his might.
This time Sheldon firmly holds the seizure victim in place and pulls his chute open,
then deploys his own.
By the time Chris regains consciousness, the ground is much too close for comfort.
He is a mere 3 thousand feet above ground.
Fortunately he has enough wits about him to guide his parachute and safely land.
He basically spent half of the drop completely blacked out.
Sir Ayme
Bonus Video: While this particular near-death experience wasn't caught on tape, we just
couldn't pass up the aftermath video – or the guy's insanely calm reaction to a massive,
life-changing injury.
Ammon McNeely ["Ah-mawn" "Mick-kneel-lee"] films himself after suffering a base-jumping
catastrophe ["ka-tass-trophy"].
Much like Matthew Gough, his parachute did not fully deploy, but this time, the injuries
are far more serious.
"Well, that didn't go good" he says with only the slightest hint of regret and
no pain.
"As you can see . . . I probably lost my leg."
He pans down to reveal one of the most disgusting injuries you have ever seen in your entire
life.
You see, Ammon had kicked away from the wall as he was falling, and while this maneuver
is probably what saved his life, it's also why his entire legbone is now sticking out
of his broken foot.
The leg bone has been completely snapped in half, and the soft wet meat inside is an angry
dark red.
Fortunately, Ammon was smart enough to use the parachute cords to tie off the wound and
prevent the bleeding from getting out of control.
A person off-camera calls out to let him know that help is on the way.
Ammon calmly acknowledges this fact and turns his attention back to making the video.
"Sorry mom," he says with disappointment.
"Think I lost my leg on that one."
The doctors want to amputate, but Ammon insist that they don't.
Two skin grafts and seven surgeries later, he is back in the mountains doing what he
loves.
Maybe he was in shock trauma, but Ammon hardly seems to be scared at all.
If anything, he seems to be in relatively little pain and is talking quite normally.
People react to near-death situations in all sorts of different ways.
Some laugh, some cry, but rarely do they stay as calm as this fellow.
1.
"Bullseye": Spanish matador ["mat-ta-door"] Marco Galan ["Mar-ko" "Gail-lan"]
certainly got a load of bull during one of his fights, but not in the typical way meant
by that phrase.
The Spanish bullfighter was busy stabbing the poor bull with barbed darts when the ferocious
beast struck back . . . right where it counts.
As Marco leaps into the air to send a third and final dart into the bull's back, the
beast surprises him with a left horn to the groin.
You can see the pain spread across Marco's face instantly as the bull hoists ["hoysts"]
him high in the air by his jewels.
Even the people in the audience had to of felt it.
The bull rips away and Marco crumples to the ground in a miserable heap.
When doctors take a look, they find one of his injured testicles has been, as the hospital
later put it, "eviscerated" ["ee-viss-sir-rated"] and needed removal.
Meanwhile, animal rights activists heard the news and rejoiced everywhere.
The injury could have easily turned deadly if Marco wasn't taken care of in time.
Although he did manage to kill the bull, the bull had in turn killed a big part of him.
Either way, many would agree that there wasn't a single winner in the arena that day.
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